“I didn’t think—” I start, but he cuts me off.
“That I’d worry when you didn’t come back?”
“I left a note.”
“With the staff member you sent in thirty minutes later who got a full-frontal view and an inappropriate proposition when I thought you were finally back and pretending to be housekeeping?” he deadpans.
Oh, fuck me. “Ihad to leave. And I thought you’d follow me.”
“Yes, ghosting instead of sayingI have to go and I need you to not be a creeperis quite the good deed.”
“You were not supposed to be my new boss.” This is not the argument I should be making, butI left a note.
“And you weren’t supposed to be Chandler Sullivan’s cousin.”
There’s a chill in his voice when he says Chandler’s name that I need to pay attention to, but that’s for later. “I was going viral. As a minor secondary character, butI was still going viral. I can’t believe you didn’t know who I was.”
“I bought your family’s café. How do I know you didn’t know whoIwas?”
Jitter whimpers.
I want to whimper too, but everything is backward and upside down and all of the dread I’ve been ignoring and suppressing for the past nine days is roaring back like a boulder falling off a cliff on a trajectory to steamroll my life. “If I’d known Chandler was in talks to sell the café, I would’ve found a way to buy it myself.”
He stares at me.
I stare back, and if he thinks he can win a staring contest with me, he can think again.
“This isn’t exactly a hair salon, is it, though?” he says.
And that boulder steamrolling my life turns to ice.
I think he just called me a liar and reminded me that I told him all of the secrets about everyone I knew in one breath.
This isn’t the man I slept with in Hawaii who’s lingered in my thoughts way more often than I’m comfortable with any man lingering.
He’s far more terrifying.
And I am absolutely fucked.
5
Grey
It’sremarkable how quickly your opinion of someone can change.
In Hawaii, it was thirty minutes from thinking I’d found someone worth knowing better to realizing she’d ghosted me—lesson learned,again—and only a few hours after that when I discovered myDuchesshad been a bridesmaid in Chandler Sullivan’s wedding. Once I turned my phone back on to a message from Zen—isn’t this the dude whose café you just bought?—and I saw that viral video, everything changed.
I went from exhilaration to worry to irritation tofuck me.
All over a short redheaded bombshell whose presence I felt the minute she pulled into the parking lot this morning, and whose ass I can’t tear my eyes away from when she beats a retreat to take her massive dog todoggie daycare.
Worse, though, is recognizing that part of me is sagging in relief at putting eyeballs on her myself to verify she’s still in one piece, that she didn’t drown in the ocean or fall down an elevator shaft or get in a fight with the wrong mongoose after she left my hotel.
I’ve spent more hours having emotional whiplash over this woman than I spent in her presence in Hawaii. And I sincerely dislike that I still care when her connection to Chandler Sullivan puts her in spot number one on mysus list.
Didshe know who I was when she picked me up in the bar?
I don’t know, but I know I’m the lucky bastard who now gets to live with constant reminders of her unless I can find a legit reason to get rid of her that won’t make me look like the asshole who fucked her and then fired her.
